Thursday, March 17, 2016

Thursday Movie Picks - Intersecting Stories

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and telling us a bit about them.
This has been a bit of a rough week for me, so we're going to do these quick-and-dirty style.

Crash (Paul Haggis, 2004) Let's get this one out of the way right off the bat. Certainly undeserving of its Best Picture Oscar, but almost equally undeserving of its reputation as an irredeemable piece of shit, Haggis's magnum opus tells the stories of a multi-cultural cast of characters as they ricochet off each other in the melting pot of modern-day Los Angeles. The moral of the story? Everyone's a little bit racist. Yes, it's a bit trite and overly pre-determined, but the performances are pretty damn good, to a one.

Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999) The similarities between this and Crash are, on the surface, kind of striking: Anderson's film ALSO tells the stories of a (much less) multi-cultural cast of characters as they ricochet off each other in the melting pot of modern-day Los Angeles. AND, they both end with something strange falling from the sky. The main difference between them, of course, is that Magnolia is actually really good. Up until those damn frogs appear, it's utterly hypnotic, featuring near-best-ever work from Tom Cruise (ROBBED of an Oscar), John C. Reilly, Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, Philip Baker Hall, Jason Robards, and Felicity Huffman, among others.

Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994) Easily the best of these three, and one of the best films ever made, Tarantino's magnum opus tells the stories of.... oh dear lord... a multi-cultural cast of characters as they ricochet off each other in the melting pot of modern-day Los Angeles (I think). I SWEAR I didn't plan on doing a theme within a theme this week, these were just the first three I thought of! Anyway, I don't know what else to say about this one except that it is justly iconic, and it's impossible to pick between Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman for best performance.

I saw Crash in the theatre on its initial release with a friend and we both thought it was passable but promptly forgot about it. When it started getting all the hype my buddy and I had to shake our memories to think if we had actually seen it.

Pulp Fiction is a love it or hate it movie and I'm in the latter camp. It was torture for me to make it through even once.

Most films have stories that intersect which made this a bit of a challenge so I decided to go with films whose main idea was that they were multi-focused.

Vantage Point (2008)-The various stories related to an attempted assassination are told from numerous vantage points. Over plotted but still engrossing film, some story threads are better realized than others. Strong cast includes Sigourney Weaver, Dennis Quaid, Forest Whitaker and Édgar Ramírez.

Detective Story (1951)-One day in the life of the detective squad of the 21st Precinct. The intersecting story of the various people who pass through their doors includes: a sweet but dotty old lady; an embezzler and his girl; a pair of blustering burglars and a naive shoplifter (Lee Grant). One of the officers, Detective Jim McLeod (Kirk Douglas) is a tough cynical man whose obsessive pursuit of an abortionist could lead to personal disaster. Both Grant and Eleanor Parker as McLeod’s wife scored Oscar nominations.

Grand Hotel (1932)-“Grand Hotel...always the same. People come, people go. Nothing ever happens.” So it seems to the desk clerk of the title building but this tells the tale of many intermingling stories. Creaks a little with age but contains some really fine performances, Joan Crawford’s best early work, the Barrymore brothers, but also some less distinguished ones, Garbo in particular seems stiff in many scenes. The genesis of the all-star picture this holds the distinction of being the only Best Picture winner to do so on a sole nomination.

I REALLY liked Magnolia UNTIL the end, which completely took me out of the story in the worst way. Magical realism done WRONG. But MY GOD the performances. They are out of this world.

Yeah, I could not understand it when Crash was even nominated for Best Picture. Then it WON.

Vantage Point is an interesting pick, since it's really one story told from multiple perspectives. I remember seeing it in the theater and by about the fourth time it rewound, the entire audience started groaning. LOUDLY.

LOVE Grand Hotel even if Garbo is ridiculously miscast as a ballerina. I haven't seen Detective Story but I will, if only for Lee Grant.

Yeah, another Lee Grant fan!!! There just can't be too many. I read her auto-bio last year, fascinating reminisces on dealing with life and her career under the blacklist.

She's always wonderful whether playing it straight and heavy or gobbling up scenery right and left ala Airport '77. Have you seen her deeply moving performance in It's My Party? That movie is loaded with so much great work, ultimately it's a crusher but there's a lot of humor mixed in.

I KNOW, RIGHT?!? Pulp Fiction is a stone cold classic and I can't believe I'm the only one who went there! I was really into Magnolia until the climax which just stopped the movie dead in its tracks for me. I don't think Crash is bad, but it is messy and it's nowhere near Best Picture material.

Hypnotic is a great word to describe Magnolia. That movie glides through three hours. And I fucking love the frog rain ending. Pulp Fiction is a pure work of genius. And, sorry but not sorry to anyone, I think Crash is a really solid movie. So what it's on the nose as far as the script is concerned. That's the point. It is perfectly well-made, and Matt Dillon's work is outstanding.

I don't think Crash was terrible but I didn't think it was that good either. It was one of those message movies that tries to drive the message in a heavy-handed way like one of those Lifetime movies except it has better actors a slightly better script.

About Me

Performer since birth, tap dancer since the age of 10. Life-long book-lover. Film obsessive. Frustrated artist since college graduation. Non-profit database specialist by day, tap teacher by night, Netflix binge-watcher by weekend.